I’ve always been a big fan of doing things in the kitchen the slow way. Knives, not food processors. Home-made stock, not store-bought. Fresh seafood, not preprocessed. The downside of this is that big projects like gumbo can take all day, sometimes longer. If I have to make a big pot of fish stock AND make my own roux AND cook and clean a big pile of live crabs AND chop all my veggies by hand…it’s just gonna take a long time. And I’ve found lately that this means that I end up not making gumbo very often any more, what with kid stuff and work stuff always getting in the way.
So I decided to see if I could set a speed record. With everything either done for me ahead of time, or done in the fastest manner possible, how long would a batch of seafood gumbo take? This was my project yesterday. I figured even if the gumbo came out lousy, it was at least a good way of decompressing from a rather grueling week at work, and might keep me away from the computer for an afternoon.
The challenge took place here, at Ray Kitchen Stadium:
It actually took me an hour to get the place this clean, what with kids breakfast and homework and science fair projects and dirty dishes all over the place. So we’re not counting cleanup time, and we’re not counting shopping time.
3:32pm: Start with the veggies: yellow onions, bell peppers, celery, okra (frozen, already sliced), tomatoes, seasoning mix, kosher salt. I got a food processor for Christmas so I’m using that to chop today rather than the chef’s knife.
Also spiritual guidance from Alex Patout:
and Clifton Chenier (you got to have a soundtrack when you make gumbo):
I’ve also got 4 quarts of frozen lobster stock I made last year when we had a lobster orgy at the house, so while the stock is thawing in the big pot, I get going on the okra. Thaw the okra in the microwave, and toss it into a big pan with 4 tomatoes (peeled, seeded and chopped), one chopped onion, a teaspoon of vinegar, half a cup of oil, seasoning and salt. Get that cooking on medium high heat until it’s bubbling:
then turn the heat down to low, cover, and don’t fuck with it for 45 minutes. While it’s cooking I chop the rest of the veggies and clean/season my seafood. Once the okra is done:
the stock should be thawed and good and hot. So add the okra to the stock, along with 3 chopped onions, 3 chopped bell peppers, about a cup of chopped celery, more salt and seasoning mix, and the roux:
Now I almost never use roux from a jar, I like to make it myself. It’s basically just flour browned in oil, and Cajuns tend to make a really dark roux, which looks and smells a lot like bitter chocolate. But we’re after speed here, so roux from a jar it is. Add the roux to the stock, stir like hell til it’s all dissolved, and bring the pot to a boil. (The roux acts as a thickener, but doesn’t hit maximum thickening power until it’s boiling.)
At this point, since it’s got the okra and the roux in there, it’s technically gumbo:
but it’s still pretty raw. Now we can add any seafood that doesn’t mind being cooked a while, which today means about a pound of catfish:
which was properly seasoned, of course:
and about a pound of blue crab claw meat:
Bring that to a boil then turn down to simmer for about an hour.
Twenty minutes before serving time, cook a few cups of long grain white rice:
Then, right before serving, add some chopped parsley and green onions, and the seafood which doesn’t want to cook a long time, which today means two pounds of Louisian crawfish (don’t buy Chinese crawfish!):
and two pints of Gulf oysters in their liquor:
Let it cook just until the edges of the oysters start to curl, and it’s done:
Serve it in bowls over the rice with crusty french bread:
and don’t forget the hot sauce:
7:04pm: Bon appetit.
We actually could have eaten before 6:30, except that the kids weren’t home from wherever they were all day. So we’ll call it three hours. Not too bad.
As to how it turned out? I give it a B-. I had some trouble with the roux not dissolving very well, so I think I ended up with not enough roux in there…you can see from the final picture, it’s not as thick as it should be. So the roux from a jar was harder to work with than homemade. I also don’t think that lobster stock was the best choice, but it’s what I had on hand. And the whole Cuisinart thing tends to turn the veggies into mush unless you’re really careful. Sorry, I just like my knife too much.
Anyway, today I will be resting and eating leftovers and trying not to think about taxes.
Have a lovely weekend.
Man, between your post and Karl’s paean to stock from last week, I’ve GOT to learn more about making and cooking with stocks….
Gregg
Damn, that’s a nice kitchen.
Now I’m gonna have to post kitchen porn pictures of my setup.
Dude, stock is totally easy. Next time you’ve got a pile of bones from dinner (chicken, turkey, beef, fish), just put them in a big pot full of cold water with a quartered onion, some chopped celery and carrots, a few parsley sprigs and maybe some bay leaves or a lemon or something. Bring it to a boil then simmer very low for a few hours. Strain it. Chill it. Freeze it.
And that’s it. Get it out next time a recipe calls for water.
Yeah, I like it.
The only problem with having a nice kitchen is that everybody wants to hang out there, so we end up eating there, doing homework there, and generally treating it like a family room. (You can’t see it but off to the right above the fridge is a TV.)
Which means its almost always a huge mess, so any big cooking projects mean an hour of prep time getting the place squared away.
The keys to stock – what ray said but generally start with roasted bones unless you have a reason to want light-colored stock – and reduce, reduce, reduce. You will wind up with way less than you expect, but you’re concentrating flavor here.
I built my kitchen with that in mind – big enough for a party and come serious cooking, at the same time.
But with that much counter space, I do wind up with a collection of all the homeless junk in the house. The eternal struggle, to keep work surfaces from becoming storage spaces.
…and can you freeze and ship that gumbo?
I think we-all should post pics of the rooms we spend time in. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Like… virtual voyeurism. Like… Sims or something. I can picture you guys better when I’m familiar with your cookware.
And I hereby vow to try my hand at making stock. Kitten stock. Yum.
I’ve been wondering about how to freeze it and ship it, but not this batch. Next time I do an A+ one, I’ll send some.
Circe, I’m not mailing any to you. You have to come down and get it in person.
Come? Down? Get it? In? Person?
Stop teasing, you scamp!
Hey, is that a King Cake on the countertop? Laissez les bon temps roulez, dude!
Gregg
Indeed it is. A Central Market one, so not the greatest, but Mardi Gras comes early this year and I’m already getting a little homesick.
What’s a King Cake?
Are you like some dangerous Cajun guy, Ray?
A king cake is a New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition. Kind of coffee-cake-ish, with green, purple and yellow sugar on top, and one of the pieces has a little plastic baby in it. People have king cake parties during the Mardi Gras season between January 6 and Mardi Gras, and whoever gets the baby is usually supposed to bring the king cake next week. Although actually it’s supposed to represent the baby Jesus, and there are all kinds of weird pagan traditions tied up in the whole “find a prize in the cake” thing, like “king for a day, then we sacrifice you”.
And yeah, I grew up in New Orleans, but I’m not a Cajun. My stepdad is half-Cajun, so I’m tangentially related I guess, but I’m pretty much full-on Boston Irish-German mutt.
I’m French/German… we’re probably related somehow.
I wanna bake a big ol cake with a plastic ovary inside it.
Take me to Mardi Gras next year, Big Guy. I never been.
Ray? I’ll clean, do laundry, answer your every request if only you’ll marry me and cook for me!!
Ugh — I swear, you couldn’t get me to go to Mardi Gras in NOLA again if you paid me. At least not unless I was safely ensconced in a beautiful place somewhere in the Garden District far away from (and upwind of) Bourbon St. We went to Mardi Gras back in, I dunno, 94 I think. Insanely crowded, nasty, and very NOT fun after the first day or so. And this was back in my twenties, when hanging around and drinking all day and night in ridiculously crowded places didn’t bother me at all.
Worst of all, the entire place reeked of vomit and urine. NO is an amazing city, but I also understsand why so many NO residents rent out their houses and hit the road for Mardi Gras every year….
I would LOVE to go to Mardi Gras for Halloween, though! NO is such an amazing city, but Mardi Gras is 100% the wrong time to experience it, IMHO.
You committed the classic blunder. You went to Mardi Gras and never left the fucking French Quarter.
I took my kids (yes my KIDS) to Mardi Gras two years ago and they said it was better than Disneyworld.
Next time you go, watch the parades uptown along St. Charles and don’t bother with the French Quarter at all. I guarantee you will be hooked.
When we visited NO for Mardi Gras, our friends Noreen and Tim lived in Bogalusa, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Tim’s mother was a member of a local krewe, and we attended her krewe’s boat parade — FAR more enjoyable than the insanely crowded parade we attended in the quarter.
Of course, while we watched the parade in the quarter we (along with everyone near us) were also watching, through binoculars, this couple having highly gymnastic sex, stnading, in front of the window, about 15 stories up in some apartment building. It was certainly… well.. festive, I suppose.
As I meant to say, however — I’ve always heard that Halloween in NOLA is very like Margi Gras — masking, parades, and all that noise, but without the horrendous crowds. I’d love to give that a try some year.
Plus, there’s the whole “voodoo vibe!”
Greeg, dude, did you take pictures of us?
I’m still trying to remember that girl’s name…
“Greeg”? Neat — usually I have too many consonants, but today I have a plethora of vowels!
so, ray, you inspired me to set a muffin speed record. (different from “speed muffins.”) same idea as your gumbo speed record… i never have time so i never bake anymore.
home from yoga. turn on the oven. turn on the “lost in translation” soundtrack. dump everything on the counter. mix dry, mix wet, mix both. zoom, zoom. decide that all muffins are better with blueberries, so i fold in one pound of them. pop in the oven. ta-da! and then i come to. “just like honey” is on, the advertised (but not real) last song on the CD. it is 10:17pm. shit. i still have a talk to write for tomorrow. muffins will be out at 10:35.
-s
Now I can’t stop thinking about speed muffins.
Karl? Where are your priorities?
Now I can’t stop thinking about Sarah doing yoga.
And I can’t stop thinking about Sarah’s muffins.
I keep thinking “mix dry mix wet mix both zoom zoom…mix dry mix wet mix both zoom zoom…”
oh you guys! now i’m blushing!! (actually true)
if you liked the procedure on the muffins, you should see me do freshman chem demos: “mix wet, stir, KABOOM! CHANGE COLOR!” but then cooking and chemistry is all the same thing anyway. have you read Hal McGee’s “On food and cooking”?
i took the muffins in to my lab and one of my grad students said “sarah, i didn’t know you could bake?!” ummm, guess i hadn’t done it in a while.
in the end my talk to recruit new physics grad students to my lab went fine. i recycled the presentation i gave in tokyo in december (you know, to fit with the “lost in translation” theme above). i was hoping the japanese text would made the talk more surreal and interesting for all those students who have already decided they want to do high energy physics. well, at least nobody fell asleep.
no time for muffins tonight, even speed muffins. we just got home from tango lessons (hugging strangers to music), and i need to crank on some work.
night, all. -s